 Bloody, broken, butchers, the bastard sons of the emperor's necessity. All words spoken of the 12th Legion, and none inaccurate in their own way. Yet beneath their blood-soaked exterior, the world-eaters were still just that, a legion of the Astartes, and operated in many ways akin to their cousins throughout the crusade. Know then that this is a record of the tactics, structure, and operational disposition of the 12th Legion world-eaters. The organizational strictures of the 12th Legion did not originally deviate far from the Terran pattern laid down during the wars of unification. The Warhounds, as they were then known, that were let loose upon the fields of the great crusade, did so under the same operational titles that their cousins in the other legions held, albeit in one that was in reality more streamlined to fit the Legion's rapidly emerging character. Primacy was placed upon rapid infantry assaults and deployments above all else. Warhound companies would bring themselves to bear upon the enemy in close assault, preferring to split the foe upon the teeth of their blades than to take them apart with bolter fire. Formations were built around Astartes equipped for this, and counted within them a far greater number of line infantry squads, supported by both specialized assault units, such as jump-pack equipped troops, and dedicated heavy assault echelons of terminator squads. Fire support, such as it was, was mainly provided by fast-moving land-speeder grav-attack vehicles, as the Warhounds generally eschewed heavy weaponry for infantry, believing said Astartes to be of better use in the melee. This did not mean the Legion lacked the capability to engage in armored warfare or artillery bombardments, merely that they saw these as a means to a tactical end. In the case of the former, even 10th Legion Primarch Ferris Manus was known to have praised their armored assault on Aldebaran Septus, but it had been enacted with a speed and fury of a Legion striving to simply gut the enemy upon their blades. Every member of every Legion rank was expected to be able to fight the enemy face-to-face, and to the extent that even the Legion's artillery crews, vehicle pilots, and reconnaissance Legionnaires all carried serrated bayonets, cleavers, glady-eye, or indeed the weapon most favored by the Legion, the chain axe, a brutal tool, a brutal tool dating back to the techno-barbarian tribes of Age of Strife-Terra. Upon his assumption of command, Angron, having little in the way of proper military training, and through the circumstances of his return to the Imperial Fold, spent no time with his father, the Emperor, made little effort in the way of reforms, merely reinforcing existing structures through the application of higher standards. The 12th Legion's chain of command had ever been blunt, and with the Primarch at the helm, even more so. Angron, having been raised as a gladiator in the pits of New Syria, placed no value on the trappings of rank, and openly scorned what he saw as flowery titles and pointless accolades accorded to the commanders of other Legions. He himself refused to be referred to as Lord by those subordinate to him, often to the point of violence if such subjects insisted upon the title. Discipline and the enforcement of authority had been an issue with the Legion from its inception. It had been noted that, in general terms, a starty psychoconditioning undertaken throughout their surgical implantation procedures produces a soldier of highly attentive discipline, and that this effect had been exacerbated by the gene seed of certain Legions, notably the 13th Legion Ultramarines, 14th Legion Deathguard, and 17th Legion Word Bearers. Within the ranks of the 12th however, this was not the case. With the astartes of the rank and file, being in some cases as bellicose and hot-blooded with their own superiors as they would be with the enemy, tempers perpetually ran hot, and insults, both perceived and real, were met with direct violence far more often than not. While this did not extend to the levels of internal discord in strife seen in the early days of the 6th Legion, the 12th responded by enforcing harsh disciplinary standards from the top down. This had a market effect on how an astartes would rise through the ranks, as doing so could only be achieved through a mix of notable battlefield leadership and superior martial skill. A sergeant, a centurion, a captain, all were expected to meet out punishment for disobedience by their own hand. For violence was the only language the 12th ever spoke. If an astartes could not successfully beat down an infraction from a subordinate with his own fists, he did not deserve the rack. The 12th broke no weakness in its officers, a system that Angron only encouraged, believing warriors needed to constantly prove their metal, both on the battlefield and off. An officer that was not both respected and feared by those under his command was no officer at all. Personal combat had perennially been the most direct way the Legion resolved interpersonal differences, and this too their father stoked, with the only addition being that the new world eaters now fought these combats with live weapons. By the outbreak of the heresy, the Legion even had a tradition of allowing any astartes to challenge a superior to open combat for the right to that superior's title. Should he wish, a simple lying infantryman could challenge a company captain for his rank. Such fights were to the death, as any captain who would lose to a subordinate in the dueling cage was simply of no use to the Legion. This being said, such fights were also rare, and victories by those of the lower ranks rare are still, since, as it has been noted, only the most brutal and vicious fighters could ever hold rank in the 12th to begin with. The signature deviation from Astartes' norm, such as it was by the time the warhounds rechristened themselves into the world eaters, was the development and implantation of the Legion's cortical implants, colloquially and brutally dubbed the Butcher's Nails. A relic of the dark age of technology, an ill understood even by the scientists of New Syria who cultivated it and implanted their creation into all their gladiatorial warriors, the mechanical elements seconded to the 12th were ordered by the Primarch Angron to study the Nails, so unmovingly fused to his own brain for deployment amongst his sons. Early attempts failed dismally, with the mortality rates among neophytes being near total. Those that survived often did so barely cogent. The Nails were intended to amplify adrenaline production while simultaneously shutting down most pain receptors and severely dulling the subjects' perceptions of their own mortality and any danger they are under. Early implantees were often rendered senselessly berserk, the Nails overcompensating for Astartes' physiology and constantly flooding now broken minds with kill urges and adrenaline spikes. Despite protests from the Mechanicum, the studies moved ahead until a generally stable iteration of the device was produced and rolled out for mass implantation. On the battlefield, the Butcher's Nails proved to be a darkly effective tool in elevating a world eater's capacity for slaughter, with their already chemically enhanced battle state fused with the aggression boosting power of their new implants. Stability was not in any way possible, and Legion-wide use of the Nails came with a high cost. In some cases, Astartes would be rendered catatonic or simply dead from a malfunction of their implants whiting out their very brains. While in other cases, a Legionary may simply never be able to deescalate the device's output. The phrase Lost to the Nails became common amongst the 12th Legion as a means to describe the berserk fury that descended upon a warrior during combat, and there were many who simply did not come back. Such Astartes were still useful to the Legion, however, and these Kedire, a repurposed high gothic word for Butcher, were organized into rampager squads. Effectively uncontrollable, these Legionaries were kept under lock and chain between battles and loosed upon the foe in areas where control was not necessary and their slaughter could bring about the greatest reward. The world eaters were known for equipping such squads with often outlandish arrays of close combat weaponry of styles drawn from the most savage and bloody barbarian cultures they had encountered, including deathmatch arena blades from Angron's own time as a pitfighter. While the Primarch did not have a profound effect on the Legion from the strictest strategic sense, the psychological impact he was to have on his sons was extraordinarily profound. Every one of the Legion as Astartes are the sons of their fathers to a greater or lesser degree, for each is made from their own genetic template. The vast majority of the reunions of Primarch and Legion were a cause for celebration, not so for the twelfth. Their father was delivered to them in chains and proceeded to slaughter most of the Legion's upper command echelon until his rage had been calmed. As the years went on, his was an exacting and brutal command style, always on the verge of blind rage, headstrong and heedless of advice. He had resigned himself to death before they had even met and was living upon borrowed time as his butcher's nails continued to fray his own brain. The Legion both loved and hated him, often in equal measure. He embodied the warrior ethos of the old warhounds to a sizable degree, a fighter of pure and simple honor who placed no stock in anything save an individual's own strength. He was, conversely, distemperate, obstinate and wrathful, a conqueror, yes, but a reckless general heedless of the lives under his command and often to always incapable of seeing the broader picture. There was a shame to be felt, too, for Angran had come to the Legion a slave, the only one of his brothers who never unified a planet or a people under his rule. Anyone could see he was a tortured broken thing, but one that would never and could never ask for aid. His presence amongst his sons affected an intense tribalism within the Legion, ever distrusted for their bloody methods from without. Angran gave the world eaters a real reason to revel in them, a savage messiah heralding the apotheosis of the most dangerous aspects of their own nature. They became what they were ever thought of as. They embodied the worst that all would tell of them, embracing the slaughtering barbarian as their true calling, for none would ever let them forget who they were, anyway. Various ritual affectations sprang from this tribalism. Cult scarification was common, notably through the practice of the triumph rope, where nastartes would carve a line on his flesh before the commencement of a battle. Should the day be taken, the line would heal as a normal scar, but should defeat be suffered, the warrior was expected, should he live, to rub the dirt of the battlefield on the wound, thereby creating a blackened section of tissue. The veterans of the Legion soon had winding lines of scar tissue, while it is said the Primarch had won continuous and unbroken triumph rope around his entire body. Such few honors that the 12th believed in were warrior marks of brotherhood, for these were intended to transcend rank and signify true individual worth. Their meaning was often quite poetic and rich with potent symbolism for those within the Legion. Red striations on the helm could be a private embellishment that resonated with the pain and torment of undergoing the psychosurgical cortex implantation of the butcher's nails, while red drops redolent of falling blood painted beneath the eye lenses denoted an nastartes' dedication to his own ritual scarification. Kill tally marks were highly common, and given the world eater's predilection for close quarter combat, commonly etched onto the armor's van braces, or to a legionary's weapon itself, while the rare crossed chain decoration accorded an individual's status of having killed a fellow world eater of higher rank in a personal duel. By the time of the Istvan 3 atrocity, the 12th Legion was not, as many would suspect, a broken and bloody thing. While undoubtedly fraying around its edges due to the ongoing devastation the nails and their descent into bloodshed was causing upon the Legion's psyche, it nevertheless represented an incredibly formidable force of arms. Alliances with the ember wolves of the Titan legio Audex and the Mechanicum of Serum ensured that, despite the wide berth many in the Imperium gave them, they were both well supported and well equipped. Continuous engagement in battle over the decades, along with the Legion's famously high casualty rate, made precise estimations of their operational strength incredibly difficult to gauge, although this humble chronicler, upon examining as many records as there is available to one, feels content with placing the number at approximately 150,000 astartes, towards the higher mid-tier of their contemporaries, thanks to a broad and relatively undiscerning intake procedure designed to help mitigate their often staggering combat losses. Around 75% of this strength was committed to the operation in the Istvan system, where they, and indeed so many of their fellows, would come to a dark and terrible reckoning with the beasts of their own worst natures. Until such a time, as you examine that particular record, however, Ave Imperator Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel are made possible through the incredibly kind contributions of my Patreon subscribers. 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